AMD Mantle scores Crytek

Despite the recent talk of DirectX 12, it looks like AMD's Mantle is more alive than ever, and getting more traction than ever, much more than naysayers expected. DICE was first studio to support Mantle with Battlefield 4, Eidos Montreal was second with Thief and now they scored another big name, Crytek.

Crytek is the company behind Crysis and Far Cry and owns an engine that is among the best and strongest in the industry.

Mantle has achieved more than many hoped for, possibly even some of the biggest optimists did not expect such big names to get on board so quickly. Since we first learned about it in September 2013, many sceptics have compared Mantle to 3DFX's Glide and other unsuccessful graphics technologies. They were wrong.

DirectX 12 will also come, but that will require new hardware, new graphics chips and cards from Nvidia and AMD and it will take time to get to market. This is one of the reasons why Mantle, a proprietary API, still has a good chance to make impact on the market. The fact that it makes your CPU and GPU works faster than when using DirectX as a default API is good argument for many Radeon owners. It is just click away in the game settings, as long as it gets implemented.

“AMD is delighted to bring Mantle support to the enormous audience of gamers and game developers reached by Crytek’s Cryengine,” said Ritche Corpus, director of ISV gaming and alliances, AMD. “Together, AMD and Crytek are forging a path for the graphics industry that better utilizes gamers’ advanced AMD GPUs through ‘closer-to-the-metal’ API design.”

Crygine engine licensees will have access to Mantle and will be able to use Mantle's closer to metal approach in their next generation titles, and we would not be surprised to see Mantle support come to some titles that are already on the market.